According to a paper published today in Atmospheric Science Letters, global precipitation has either decreased, increased, or not changed over the past 30 years, depending upon which of 3 global datasets are examined:

“Decadal trends of global precipitation are examined using the Climate Prediction Center (CPC) Merged Analysis of Precipitation (CMAP), Global Precipitation Climatology Project (GPCP), and National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP)/National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) reanalysis data. The decadal trends of global precipitation average diverge a decreasing trend for the CMAP data, a flat trend for the GPCP data, and an increasing trend for the reanalysis data.”

Thus, the actual trend of global precipitation, if any, remains a mystery. Several peer-reviewed papers have shown climate models are unable to simulate decadal trends in precipitation, unable to simulate regional trends in precipitation, and that the claim “wet gets wetter, dry gets drier” is without basis.

Decadal trends of global precipitation are examined using the Climate Prediction Center (CPC) Merged Analysis of Precipitation (CMAP), Global Precipitation Climatology Project (GPCP), and National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP)/National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) reanalysis data. The decadal trends of global precipitation average diverge a decreasing trend for the CMAP data, a flat trend for the GPCP data, and an increasing trend for the reanalysis data. The decreasing trend for the CMAP data is associated with the reduction in high precipitation. The flat trend for the GPCP data is related to the offset between the increase in high precipitation and the decrease in low precipitation. The increasing trend for the reanalysis data corresponds to the increase in high precipitation.

Sounds a lot like the conclusions an honest appraisal of the temperature records might reach.
Might be warming,cooling or standing still.
Given the duration and quality of historical records we cannot say.

And there appears to be very little interest in finding out, or establishing a better measuring system for the future ,on the part of our politicians and bureaucrats.

Decadal Trends (DT) of Global Precipitation (GP) are examined (E) using the Climate Prediction Center (CPC) Merged Analysis of Precipitation (CMAP), Global Precipitation Climatology Project (GPCP), and National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP)/National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Reanalysis Data (RD). The DT of Global Precipitation Average (GPA) Diverge a Decreasing Trend (DDT!) for the CMAP data, a Flat Trend (FT) for the GPCP data, and an Increasing Trend (IT*) for the RD. The Center for Replicable Atmospheric Precipitation (CRAP) has devised an Over Land Analysis (CRAPOLA) as a Water Assessment Standardized Trending Element (WASTE) of Mean Outlying Nonlinear Environmental Yoyos (MONEY).

update on the EU Brussels energy meeting…paying mere lip service to CAGW:

28 June: Bloomberg: Ewa Krukowska: EU Pledges Focus on Cheaper Energy With Secure Supply
The European Union must make security of energy supply, reduction of costs and the fight against climate change a priority for the next five years, the 28-nation bloc’s leaders agreed…
“We must avoid Europe relying to such a high extent on fuel and gas imports,” leaders said in the document. “To ensure our energy future is under full control, we want to build an energy union aiming at affordable, secure and sustainable energy.” …
The commission is considering proposing an energy efficiency goal of 27 percent to 30 percent next month, according to two people with knowledge of the matter who asked not to be identified, citing policy…
The EU must also continue to lead the fight against global warming by agreeing setting ambitious 2030 climate targets, according to the document…http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-06-27/eu-leaders-to-pledge-focus-on-cheaper-energy-with-secure-supply.html

reality:

27 June: Deutsche Welle: Germany amends renewables legislation
Germany’s parliament has voted to revise the country’s green power subsidies and surcharges system, ostensibly to rein in costs. Critics say households will foot the bill for 45 percent renewables in Germany by 2025.
Chancellor Angela Merkel’s coalition mustered a 78 percent majority vote in parliament on Friday to modify Germany’s 14-year-old Renewable Energy Act. Objectors said households and not industry will end up paying more.
In a ballot, 454 parliamentarians voted for the package, six abstained, and 123 voted against the package of amendments decried by the opposition Greens and Left party…
Parliament’s renewables package would gradually trim subsidies paid in recent years to householders and firms which feed electricity from their own solar, wind, hydro-power and biogas installations into the public power grid.
Currently, one kilowatt-hour of such power draws a 17 euro cent subsidy. Next year, this will sink to 12 cents…
Greens parliamentarian Oliver Krischer criticized Gabriel for extending surcharges to householders, especially those who generated power from their own solar panels or wind turbines. An estimated 1.4 million residential buildings have solar power…
NABU also said the legislative amendments also failed to further reduce Germany’s extraction at brown coal mines which are blamed widely for climate warming…http://www.dw.de/germany-amends-renewables-legislation/a-17741733

27 June: AfricanManager.com: Niger launches coal-fired power plant
Niger has launched a new coal power plant in the Tahoua region.
PANA reported that the new power plant will contribute to efforts to combat desertification by reducing wild logging for domestic purposes and helping to achieve energy self-sufficiency.
Niger loses 100,000 hectares of woodlands, particularly because of the use of firewood for domestic cooking.
Faced with this situation, the government decided to exploit its reserves of coal.
Niger’s President Mohamadou Issoufou launched the construction of the new 600MW coal power plant in Salkadamna, 80km northwest of Tahoua, Thursday.
***Fully funded by the US company California Energy Services (SAP), the project covers an area of 30 square kms.
At a total cost of US$1.475 billion, the project involves the construction of an open pit mine, the 600-megawatt power plant and electricity lines to take power to the main consumption centres of the country.
Once self sufficiency is achieved, Niger will also export electricity to neighboring countries such as Mali, Burkina Faso and Benin…http://www.africanmanager.com/site_eng/detail_article.php?art_id=22190

VIDEO: 26 June: Fox News – “Your World: Neil Cavuto: Murray Energy CEO: The president is grossly wrong
TRANSCRIPT:
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Folks will tell you climate change is a hoax or a fad or a plot. It’s a liberal plot…
(LAUGHTER)
ROBERT MURRAY, CEO, MURRAY ENERGY: I am scared to death for our country. What he is doing is destroying the most reliable, lowest-cost power grid that the world has ever seen…
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
OBAMA: People don’t like gas prices going up. They don’t like electricity prices going up. And we ignore those very real and legitimate concerns at our peril…
MURRAY: The president, Neil, is grossly wrong.
It’s incompetence. It’s evil. It’s a power grab of America’s electric power grid is what he is doing. And electric rates are going to double between now and 2017. The PJM interconnection that represents 61 million Americans in 16 states had their auction this month, and the utilities themselves bid the price of electricity up double in ’17 and ’18 over what Americans are already paying for their electricity…
MURRAY: They’re shutting down 411 coal-fired power plants in America, Neil. That’s about 100,000 megawatts of 4-cent-a-kilowatt-hour electricity.
The wind and solar that President Obama and the Democrats in the Senate espouse is 22-cents-a-kilowatt-hour, five times more costly, and it wouldn’t even exist, except it gets a subsidy from the taxpayer. He is driving this country from a reliable, low-cost power grid to enormous electric power costs for absolutely no environmental benefit whatsoever…
MURRAY: He’s appeasing the radicals who got him elected, liberal elitists such as Bloomberg, the mayor of New York, who gave him $50 million to get rid of coal, Tom Steyer, $100 million in California, most all the Hollywood characters, radical environmentalists, radical unionists in some cases…
CAVUTO: Does it bother you, then, Bob, that George Shultz, a former top Nixon, Reagan, Ford Cabinet member has no problem with it? Hank Paulson, the former treasury secretary, has no problem with it. They’re worried about climate change. They’re worried that if we don’t do something now to take out an insurance policy, we will regret it.
The president has included them in a task force to look at this and the problems that are mounting, including Michael Bloomberg, who you just mentioned. Do you feel like in that company you’re an odd man out?
MURRAY: No, I’m not an odd man out.
I’m in the mainstream of the scientific facts. If he shut down every coal- fired power plant in America, it would affect the amount of carbon dioxide one-twentieth of 1 percent. China is going to burn 4,300,000,000 tons of coal this year. He has knocked the United States coal industry down from 1.2 billion to 800,000.
They’re going to burn five times as much. Which way does the wind blow, which way does the Earth spin? It has nothing to do with the environment, sir. It has to do with power. It has to do with getting power over the grid.
When he says sky — electric rates would skyrocket, he meant it. He’s carrying it out. How would you want to get control of America the most? Do it through the electric power availability, rationing it and the cost of electricity. That is what is happening.
I’m afraid to death for America. And the people in this country had better be, because the people on fixed incomes — and I grew up poor — are going to be hurt the worst…
CAVUTO: OK, but, Bob, what do say then? It’s not just Democrats, Bob, as you know. A number of Republicans are on board with this as well and big believers that climate change is a worry. I mentioned George Shultz. I mentioned Hank Paulson. There are a number of others who similarly fear. What do you say about them?
MURRAY: There are very few Republicans — I’m an engineer.
CAVUTO: Yes.
MURRAY: I have studied the climate change science for decades.
I don’t profess to be an expert. But I know who they are. This global warming is a hoax. Twenty years ago, it was acid rain. Today, it’s a hoax to try to get control over the economy, to try to get control over this country. And the easiest way to do it is the electric power grid and the cost of it…
That’s their agenda…
CAVUTO: Bob Murray, you always speak your mind. I appreciate that.
And you’re quite right. It was 40 years ago there were TIME and Newsweek covers bemoaning a global freeze. We were all going to be shivering. That was then. This is now.http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/your-world-cavuto/2014/06/27/murray-energy-ceo-president-grossly-wrong

27 June: Mining Weekly: Ajoy K Das: India’s Coal Ministry identifies coal blocks for power sector
India’s Coal Ministry has identified eight coal blocks for allocation to thermal power companies that are facing a shortage of feedstock…
The blocks have been explored regionally by the provincial government and reserves estimated at around 8.3-billion tonnes.
In July 2013, the Indian government had allocated 14 coal blocks for captive use by steel, cement and power producers, including the country’s largest electricity generator, NTPC Limited.
However, Coal Ministry officials said that the eight blocks identified in eastern India would be allocated specifically to power companies given the shortage of coal and the risk of power shortages across the country…
According to the Independent Power Producers’ Association, thermal power plants were facing a fuel shortage of about 120-million tonnes…
According to Coal Ministry estimates, peak coal supply shortage was forecast at 200-million tonnes by 2016/17, compared with 120-million tonnes in 2013/14. The shortfall would have been higher, at 150-million tonnes, during the last fiscal but for the fact that several new thermal power plant did not go into production having failed to secure coal supplies.
Nearly 208 coal blocks have been allocated since 1993 with a reserve capacity of 50-million tonnes to 60-billion tonnes. At an average annual production of 400-million to 500-million tonnes these mines had the potential to last 50 yearshttp://www.miningweekly.com/article/indias-coal-ministry-identifies-coal-blocks-for-power-sector-2014-06-27

CAVUTO: Does it bother you, then, Bob, that George Shultz, a former top Nixon, Reagan, Ford Cabinet member has no problem with it? Hank Paulson, the former treasury secretary, has no problem with it. They’re worried about climate change. They’re worried that if we don’t do something now to take out an insurance policy, we will regret it.

Paulson retired as CEO of Goldman-Sachs, after dissolving some 600 million in stock. How much of his estimated 700 million-dollar worth is tied up in the sub-prime mortgage scandal is anybody’s guess. I find it more than a little strange that this man, who energetically headed up the U.S. treasury bailout of overextended banks (G-S chief among them) as overseer of the TARP program, now finds the time and energy in his retirement to bang the drum for cap-and-trade. It is also more than a little unsettling to those of us who see global warming as a government scam no less venal than the collateralized debt obligations created during Paulson’s tenure at GS, which he saw fit to so fully remunerate as treasury boss. That President Obama would proudly place this name in the “yea” column as support for his cap-and-trade policy… priceless.

The Rolling Stone characterization of GS and its minions as a “giant vampire squid” is apt. It (and they) just keep on sucking.

Off topic, sorry Anthony. asking re 1.827 sea ice extent Antarctic currently . Is this the largest recorded Antarctic anomaly since the records began?
Can anyone help with this? It looks like it might touch 2,000,000 in the next few days which would be exceptional.

“On this blog and others, most comments about my previous post “Yet another trick of cosmic rays” have been friendly. Thank you. But some people still want to dismiss all the meticulous experimental, observational and theoretical work of Henrik Svensmark and his colleagues in the Danish National Space Institute by saying there is simply no link between cosmic rays and the climate.”http://calderup.wordpress.com/

In experiments where ultraviolet light produces aerosols from trace amounts of ozone, sulphur dioxide, and water vapour, the number of additional small particles produced by ionization by gamma sources all grow up to diameters larger than 50 nm, appropriate for cloud condensation nuclei. This result contradicts both ion-free control experiments and also theoretical models that predict a decline in the response of larger particles due to an insufficiency of condensable gases (which leads to slower growth) and to larger losses by coagulation between the particles. This unpredicted experimental finding points to a process not included in current theoretical models, possibly an ion-induced formation of sulphuric acid in small clusters.http://calderup.wordpress.com/

Well. This one will be something for the historians. The first black president irreversibly destroys the country. How about that. I mean irreversibly. I feel so sorry not only for the american people but for the world because who is there to take over (and believe me, somebody will take over) as world leader. China? Maybe. Russia? Hope not. Europe? Yeah, right. Perhaps if we are lucky, Germany :-). That’s what it has come down to. If they could just kick that stupid b..ch who started the Energiewende nightmare I wouldn’t have hesitated one second that Germany would emerge as the world leader. The world benefitted so much have USA at the lead. Now, I’m afraid we are entering the dark ages of the modern era. The left is eventually fulfilling their dream of making everybody equally poor to the applause of mega rich Hollywood liberals. It’s a joke really. You couldn’t make dark satire like that if you tried. Anybody remembers the film Brazil? When it came out, satire. Today, documentary.

CO2 – It’s a hell of a gas.
*************************************************************************************************************88
Yup and the guys putting the datasets together are probably on the CO2 and getting high.

Bob, over the past few days I have witnessed many of the ‘big hitters’ here at WUWT justify significant adjustments made by nasa in US surface temperatures.
The papers you mention are discussing climate data sets as though they were gospel, factual and accurate…surely we all know now that any such data is open to ‘re-interpretation’?

Colleagues here in Australia are working on a correlation between rainfall at a site and its maximum daily temperature. At sites so far examined in detail, the conclusion seems to be that “water cools”.
The correlation is not shown yet to be causation, but it is strong and large.
It is plausible that temperatures might need adjustment for rainfall before they are to be used for certain purposes. If it is not already catered for, one example of a need for rainfall-corrected data sets would be estimation of climate sensitivity. Another would be the calibration of tree ring proxies, which might be better done after removal of a known growth agent, namely rainfall, from the temperature data used for calibration.

However, the matter of getting the rainfall right is a problem unforeseen. I’ll tell my mates to adjust their rainfall before they use it to adjust their temperature for the purpose of quantification of ECS.

Which one of these “Climate Prediction Center (CPC) Merged Analysis of Precipitation (CMAP), Global Precipitation Climatology Project (GPCP), and National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP)/National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR)”. actually uses real data, as opposed to models and predictions?

Should there also be corrections to the temperature readings to account for wind speed and direction, length of daylight, cloud cover, the average gum leaf intake of nearby koalas? Why stop at rainfall?
/sarc
Aren’t the temp readings supposed to record the temp due to the weather at the recording location? Removing the weather factors seems to be counter-productive.
It appears one can use any variation of factors to reach the conclusion one is looking for.

Colleagues here in Australia are working on a correlation between rainfall at a site and its maximum daily temperature. At sites so far examined in detail, the conclusion seems to be that “water cools”.
The correlation is not shown yet to be causation, but it is strong and large.
It is plausible that temperatures might need adjustment for rainfall before they are to be used for certain purposes. If it is not already catered for, one example of a need for rainfall-corrected data sets would be estimation of climate sensitivity. Another would be the calibration of tree ring proxies, which might be better done after removal of a known growth agent, namely rainfall, from the temperature data used for calibration.

Water as vapor and droplets raises the enthalpy of the air so a volume of air with increased enthalpy can carry more heat before rising in temperature. So the amount of heat in the atmosphere may remain constant as temperature varies with the amount of water. Temperature is the incorrect metric for measuring heat retention due to radiative gases. This does not prevent climate ‘scientists’ playing games with TOB etc., which just demonstrates even less understanding of meteorology and physics.

Theoretically a warming world is a wetter world due to an increase in evaporation and sea surface area. How one can state that increases in precipitation will only appear in regions that are already receiving excessive rainfall, with none or little going to drought areas, is frustratingly beyond my understanding. Is there actually any theory or evidence that could support such an apparent ridiculously assertion? Anyone? GK

Kudos to Bob’s analyses. Verification is the key to any scientific analyses.

On the other hand there has been a disturbing trend to characterize changing weather as climate. And the alarmists have argued with great circularity that climate change will make the earth both wetter and drier.

…..unable to simulate regional trends in precipitation, and that the claim “wet gets wetter, dry gets drier” is without basis.

Ah well, this one’s gone then. It was fun while it lasted.

Abstract – 2 October 2012Changes in the variability of global land precipitation
[1] In our warming climate there is a general expectation that the variability of precipitation (P) will increase at daily, monthly and inter-annual timescales. Here we analyse observations of monthlyP (1940–2009) over the global land surface using a new theoretical framework that can distinguish changes in global Pvariance between space and time. We report a near-zero temporal trend in global meanP. Unexpectedly we found a reduction in global land P variance over space and time that was due to a redistribution, where, on average, the dry became wetter while wet became drier. Changes in the P variance were not related to variations in temperature. Instead, the largest changes in P variance were generally found in regions having the largest aerosol emissions. Our results combined with recent modelling studies lead us to speculate that aerosol loading has played a key role in changing the variability of P.
Geophysical Research Letters, doi:10.1029/2012GL053369, 2012http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2012GL053369

The nuances of Chinese culture may allow them to overlook the irony of this report. In keeping with such inscrutability, the grammar employed is… well, challenging. Just try to find the verb in their abstract:

The decadal trends of global precipitation average diverge a decreasing trend for the CMAP data, a flat trend for the GPCP data, and an increasing trend for the reanalysis data.

In my technical world, I consider this a reflection of what I wall “Limits to Knowledge”. The idea is that our ability to understand is always limited by something, be it our sampling, natural variation greater than the trend, or incapacity for seeing connections between more than three parameters at one time.

When I speak of this Limits to Knowledge, I am trying to bring to an end the fruitless over-examination, the “sciencing” something to death when it is time to make a decision. People want certainty, however, and if they can’t have true cerrtainty then they will settle for a well-crafted PowerPoint: three decimal places makes people feel better even when the actual understanding is +/- 50%.

Climate science is not the problem we face, but the human factor of wanting certainty and control when there is neither of each. We conflate passion with knowledge – Michael Mann is the poster-child of pounding the table as proof of being Right. If we insisted that so-called leaders admit upfront what they didn’t know or what they were uncertain about, those leaders know the first fool who claimed that he, and only he, had all the answers, would sweep them at the polls. But not just at the polls, but in the shaving mirror where they would look at themselves and think, “Why couldn’t I be the cool one who knows everything?”

All 3 possibilities are consistent with Climate Change. That is because Climate Change underlying dogma rests on AGW. And as far as AGW adherents believe, “the debate is over. The Science is settled.” In other words “take it on faith” and appeals to authority are the tenents of of Climate Change. It is a religion based on faith.

New paper finds the “wet get wetter and dry get drier” meme is false on local scales

An important paper published today in Hydrology and Earth System Sciences finds the claim that global warming causes wet regions to become wetter and dry regions to become drier is incorrect and “does not hold over water or land.” Instead, the authors find “in terms of P − E [precipitation – evaporation], the climate models do not project that the “wet get wetter and dry get drier” at the local scales that are relevant for agricultural, ecological and hydrologic impacts.”

The “wet get wetter and dry get drier” meme had apparently not been checked on regional scales to which it is applied by the IPCC and climate scientists. According to the authors, “Much of the research on projected climate impacts has been based on an implicit assumption that this CC [Clausius–Clapeyron] relation [the basis for the “wet get wetter and dry get drier” meme] also holds at local (grid box) scales but this has not previously been examined. In this paper we find that the simple latitudinal average CC scaling relation does not hold at local (grid box) scales over either ocean or land.”

According to the paper, “Much public and scientific perception about changes in the water cycle has been based on the notion that temperature enhances E [evaporation]. That notion is partly true but has proved an unfortunate starting point because it has led to misleading conclusions about the impacts of climate change on the water cycle. A better general understanding of the potential impacts of climate change on water availability that are projected by climate models will surely be gained by starting with the notion that the greater the enhancement of E [evaporation], the less the surface temperature increase (and vice versa). That latter notion is based on the conservation of energy and is an underlying basis of climate model projections.” In other words, the climate self-regulates with increases in temperature offset by increases in evaporative cooling [and vice-versa] to maintain temperatures within a homeostatic range.

American Meteorological Society President Dr. Marshall Shepherd tweeted that one of his “toughest challenges” is “Explaining to linear thinkers that dry/drier, wet/wetter is expected. They want either or.” Perhaps this paper will explain to Dr. Shepherd why his superior non-linear thinking needs a reset on the “dry/drier, wet/wetter” meme that had not been verified on local/regional scales prior to the publication of this paper.

Well I’ll be damn. They actually found a consensus! And 100% to boot! Models consensually agree that the new climate warming theory is this: CO2climate=catastrophicthermocryodroughtydrenchythiswaythatwayupdownsidewayseverywhichwaybutloosestatisticallydisagreeablesupercalafragilisticallyconfirmedtobehumancaused. Hey! My spell checker didn’t underline it! So it must be right.

charles nelson says:
June 28, 2014 at 3:00 am
…surely we all know now that any such data is open to ‘re-interpretation’?
—————————————–
I believe the reason the pro CAGW researchers don’t give data and code is because most of their findings are subject to interpretation.
Their findings appear to be driven by activism, opinion and/or self preservation and therefore cannot be re-examined.
cn

I am one of the few working in the area of rainfall patterns over different parts of the globe. My first paper [published in 1977] relate to the dates of onset over Kerala Coast, an important event in monsoon rains. This showed a 52-year cycle. My second paper relates to Mahalapye in Botswana. The precipitation data presented a 60-year cycle — with sub-multiples, amplitude & phase angles; integrated — published in 1981. The Fortaleza precipitation data in Brazil presented a 52 year cycle — with sub-multiples, phase angles and amplitudes; integrated –. This was published in 1984. 1986 published the analysis of Durban in South Africa and Catuane in Mozambique. The precipitation data of Durban showed 66-year cycle and Catuane 54 years — sub-multiples, amplitude & phase angles integrated –. In the case of Ethiopian stations the analysis was published in 1990. They varied from 22 to 44 years cycles. Asmara in present Eritrea presented 22 year cycle, which is a sub-multiple seen in Durban precipitation. Indian rainfall — all-India southwest monsoon — data analysis was published in 1996 — the homogenized data series was available only in 1995 –. The all-India Southwest Monsoon rainfall presented 60-year cycle — completed two full cycles and started in 1987 the third cycle. This is different in Andhra Pradesh state rainfall that receives rainfall during the southwest and northeast monsoons and cyclonic activity presented 132 year cycle in annual precipitation. The southwest monsoon and northeast monsoon rainfall data presented 56 year cycle but in opposite direction. The cyclonic activity followed the northeast monsoon 56 year cycle pattern. The hurricanes & typhoons followed 60-year cycle of All-India Southwest monsoon but in follow opposite pattern. Global temperature followed the same pattern but similar to typhoons pattern.

In such scenario, average.rainfall pattern provides negative feedback. It is better to look at regional level pattern as they follow general circulation patterns in conjenction with natural in-built cyclic variations.